Interesting how the article fails to mention that aspect, isn't it? Not that the NADA has any serious power over the incumbent manufacturers, to force them to serve that segment of the market.
Sadly true. Or, the so-called internal IT Dept. can be a shambolic mess of PHB's, Brunchlords, Catberts, metric maximizers, and micromanagers, presiding over the hollowed-out and burned out remains of the actual workforce that you'd need to reliably do the job.
> Shares in the world’s biggest beer, wine and spirits producers have collectively lost $830 billion in market value over just four years, according to Bloomberg.
Quick Fix: Detail each student's supposed disabilities on their transcripts. Gotta make sure that potential employers and grad schools know, "so they can provide the appropriate accommodations" to meet all those disabled students' needs, eh?
IIR, grade inflation was supposedly started by the Vietnam-era draft exemption rules - students without high grades lost their exemptions, and professors and colleges were often reluctant to "send them off to die".
Unfortunately, nobody at the table cared much about getting it under control - let alone rolling it back - after the draft was eliminated in '73.
With all the recent stories about Harvard Literature majors being unable to focus long enough to actually read literature, rampant cheating with AI, etc. - maybe they should just give A+'s to all students paying full tuition, A's to those paying up to 80% full tuition, and so on.
And recruiters & such should regard every grade above a 'D' as "occasionally bothered to show up".
I'm sure "Why Boys Are..." gets the clicks - but if you actually care about fixing the problem, in a country where gender differences & favoritism are political hot buttons, and even students at elite universities are poor readers - then maybe start by framing things differently?
"...while average scores have declined for everyone, boys are doing much worse."
And it definitely doesn't get the resources.
"But in contrast with efforts to encourage girls in math and science, which have helped shrink their achievement gap with boys, little attention or effort has been focused on improving boys’ reading skills."
We've been framing things the same way for decades now, ignoring boys. Maybe it is time to frame things differently.
Unless you also think that boys just don't matter.
Sadly, it sounds like you're all-in on making it a zero sum, us-vs.-them game. If not declaring a war over resources in the Education-Industrial Complex, then condemning anyone who's reluctant to take up arms for your cause.
Vs. over 100 years ago, my grandmother taught 1st through 8th grades. In a one-room schoolhouse. Rural community - maybe 1% of parents had been to college. Annual per-student funding was $50-ish. Grandma's teaching credentials were, at best, a 2-year "Normal School" degree. The School District's Superintendent was probably 1/4 time or less, with zero administrative staff.
And yet the vast majority of grandma's students left her 8th grade able to read at that level. Old family stories from the era have neither "boys vs. girls" subtexts, nor zero-sum worldviews.
Put together a bunch of local focus groups of successful elementary school teachers - preferably ones who remember the "good old days", before how reading should be taught was prescribed by big-ego academics, consultants, ideologues, and politicians. (Ideally, the latter sorts would be lured off to some red herring project, that'll conveniently never get funded.)
Ask 'em to assemble short descriptions of "what actually works" for teaching reading. If they end up describing half a dozen approaches, which seem to work in different circumstances (kids, teacher, resources, etc.) - that's fine. Also ask for lists describing a dozen or two advantages and disadvantages - which help or hurt a kid's prospects for reading well - and simple ideas on how to encourage the former and fix or work around the latter.
Encourage the old teachers to leave off group identifiers. Let real-world parents and teacher reading their descriptions intuit that (say) #11 would apply to many lower-income non-white Catholic boys.
Try to put a strong "every child is an individual human being" slant on the whole thing. Far too much of the current focus is on partitioning kids into various "identity" castes, for the benefit of people who evidently thrive on caste warfare. If we can't magically ship all those folks off to some Planet Faraway, I don't have any great ideas for keeping them from storming into the classrooms and spoiling everything.
How does this result in better literacy rates and how might the educators and administrators prevent these new identifiers from forming into “castes” of their own? Can’t parents and teachers sort of gerrymand the program. Don’t children (like adults) want to bond over shared “identities”, individuality not withstanding?
My interpretation of your proposal is that each cohort is taught to read in a way that’s supposed to correspond to their respective strengths and weaknesses. In a way I don’t see how this is too far off from figuring out better ways to teach boys how to read; if a better way to teach girls is discovered in the process then is that okay with you even if both methods differ and say…learning had to take place in separate classrooms because of it? I don’t imagine the system you theorized would be any different with regard to separation.
I’m sure that in theory every cohort wouldn’t be a 1:1 match per teaching method, there would probably be some overlap, mixed classrooms so to speak, all getting taught the same way.
But with so much emphasis being put on the eradication of “castes” it begins to feel like getting the kids to just be able to read is lost and used as a front for some other agenda.
Literacy rates in general are low and boys have typically done worse but in addition to other factors that might not have always been normal (e.g. low percentages of young men in college compared to women), the present decline will likely affect young men the most in the long run and if overall rates continue to decline young men when probably be only qualified to pick fruit and pack boxes, have sex and play games for a living. Until the thrill of the last two wear off. It doesn’t take a long perusal through the news and history books to see how society is shaped by the decisions and dispositions of men. They’ve seen other “identities” (borrowing your quote marks) over the last few years receive attention and treatment in some fashion. If no one is willing to give them the same opportunities then enjoy the Nick Fuentes/Nicki Minaj administration in 2032.
Do you object to the headline for the same reasons as the person above? Do you have an issue with the article itself?
I’m not trying to be provocative. I’d only like to know what you think. If there’s a legitimate reason to single young men out in this issue then what’s wrong with that?
> "I got the idea of using espresso as a staining agent from the circular dried stains in used coffee cups," says Claudia Mayrhofer, who is responsible for ultramicrotomy at the institute. During preparation, she cuts tissue samples into wafer-thin slices and fixes them onto sample holders. Staining is the last step before examination under the electron microscope.
I'm curious about the grad student who is the second author on the research paper. Is he the one tasked with the current-SOP staining with (radioactive and poisonous) uranyl acetate? Was it his overworked-and-drowsy "oopsie" which lead to the discovery?
Amusing, but no (at least I sincerely hope). Food and wet samples are never in the same vicinity as a matter of OSHA (plus just a general desire not to get yourself or others killed). Violating that would typically be a great way to speedrun getting fired.
Radioactive substances go beyond that, generally being handled in their own dedicated area that no one else is permitted to enter for any reason. The level of paranoia is actually fairly impressive (but obviously necessary).
What does "infiltrated by bots" mean? I'm sure there are some users running scripts, bots, and/or ai's here. Others are obviously just here to pitch their product, or seem like shills for various things.
But overall - whatever dang & co are doing to minimize the problem seems to be working fine.
You forgot the part where there is a bootstrap problem for any fintech.
You need the appropriate license to make money, but you can only get that license if you already have enough money.
On top of that is a requirement that basically demands that you have employees in charge that have worked and gained job experience at the established businesses.
This is good for stability, but it also means that innovation gets nibbed in the bud.
Neither my comment, nor the prior one, had anything to do with fintech.
Concerning "innovation" in financial systems, done by relative outsiders, with little experience or incentive to keep the system stable: Given the track record, I'd argue that such innovations should either be outright banned, or limited to some tiny percentage of the relevant financial market. The world does not need more FTX's.
But sadly, it feels like pigs will be singing Handel's Messiah before Europe's leaders get off their fat asses and actually do anything about their problems.
Why should they do something about it? They are not IT people. If you want to switch, do it today. Plenty of options exist.
If you designed yourself into a corner by utilizing function as a service to program agains ta proprietary API, then you can just as well start from scratch or quit and join a company that knows how to avoid lock-in.
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